Sin consciousness is Satan’s chief hindrance to faith. It is his oldest device. Today it springs from an ignorance of the substitutionary work of Christ.
The ministers, in attempting to separate the congregation from the worldly influences and build them up in a holy life, have industriously preached sin rather than righteousness, redemption, and sonship,
There are almost no sermons preached on righteousness as defined in the Pauline revelation, or on fellowship.
The fact is that only a few recognize the distinction between fellowship and relationship.
Our relationship is born of God. He is the Author of it. Man cannot sever his relationship with the Father, but he may do that which will cause the Father to sever it.
Our relationship is like a legal marriage. The law married the couple; they cannot unmarry themselves. They may do that which will compel the law to separate them.
Let it be fully understood that God is the author of our union with Himself.
Jesus said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches” (John 15:5). The branch possesses no ability to separate itself from the vine. That ability is in the hands of the husbandman.
It is easy for us to break fellowship with the Father. The book of John was written to show us the secret of maintaining fellowship with the Father and with one another.
The word backslide does not occur in the New Testament. Why? It describes Israel. The first covenant people who were the servants of Jehovah would backslide or leave Jehovah for another god.
They did not have eternal life. They were not sons, only servants. They had never been recreated. They were servants of the Abrahamic covenant and the law of that covenant.
We should never use the word backslide in referring to a Christian who has broken fellowship. We should teach him clearly what fellowship means.
That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. (1 John 1:3–4)
You see, joy is one of the riches of the new creation. Very few of us have ever made a study of it.
There is a vital contrast between joy and happiness. Happiness comes from our surroundings, environment, health, and money. Joy is something that only children of God possess. It is the fruitage of a rich fellowship with the Father, the Word, and with one another.
This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)
Notice the next verse: “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth.”
Remember Colossians 1:12–13: “Giving thanks unto the Father…who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son.”
Darkness is Satan’s dominion.
The law of the new covenant is given to us in John 13:34: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you.” The word love there is agape, the new kind of love.
That commandment is to govern the walk of the believer. If we step out of love by criticizing one of the brethren or saying something we ought not to say, or doing something we ought not to do, we mar our fellowship and go into darkness.
It is amazing how many people are attending church regularly every Sunday, who know they have been born again but have had no fellowship with the Father for years.
They are living in spiritual darkness as far as the Word is concerned. They have no feeling for lost souls. They give as a duty and attend church as a habit.
The joy they once knew in their spiritual life is gone. They are living in spiritual darkness.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)
God is light. When I am walking in fellowship, I am walking in the light of the Word, the light of the Spirit.
I am in fellowship with my own spirit. I am in fellowship with the brethren. The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, keeps me clean from sins of ignorance that I may have committed. I have not yet grown up to know that they are sins.
The next verse says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” We have lost our fellowship and are walking in darkness.
Yet verse 9 clears it up: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This is not for the unsaved man, but for the believer.
That means He will restore our fellowship.
Righteousness means the ability to stand in the Father’s presence without the sense of guilt, inferiority, or condemnation.
You remember Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” (ASV). There is no sense of guilt for we are enjoying the fullness of His fellowship.
Note this: if we confess our sins, He at once forgives us and restores to us our standing and privileges in Christ. It is wrong for you to condemn yourself after He has forgiven you. You are never to think of it again.
First John 2:1 says, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Jesus is the family lawyer. He is the attorney general of the family of God.
When we break fellowship and ask the Father’s forgiveness, our Advocate immediately takes up our case and restores our lost fellowship. It is vital that we know this.
There is only one basic sin that the believer commits and that is breaking the love law. When that sin is committed, it may throw the door open for a thousand others. We are to walk in love.
First John 4:16 gives us a remarkable exposition of love: “And we have known and have believed the love which God has to us. God is love, and he that abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (DBY).
I like this translation; it has that intimate touch and it brings us into such vital consciousness of our union with Him.
The word perfect occurs several times in this epistle:
No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. (1 John 4:12)
But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected. (1 John 2:5)
Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment. (1 John 4:17)
Perfect love casteth out fear.…He that feareth is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18)
You may never be perfect in faith or wisdom, but you may be perfect in love. Why? Because His nature has made us what we are. We are new creations by nature, and that nature is love.
Now we can understand that sin consciousness comes from stepping out of the love realm into the realm of darkness or selfishness, out of the light of love into the darkness of sense knowledge.
The reason sin consciousness has dominion over the believer is because there has been no clear teaching in regard to the new creation.
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:17–18)
Another translation puts it this way: “There is a new creation whenever a man comes to be in Christ” (MOFF).
Man is a spirit; he has a soul or reasoning faculties and he lives in a body.
Ezekiel 36:26 tells us, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”
If He puts a new spirit within you, He puts a new self within you. There is going to be a new kind of love and a new self dominated by this new kind of love.
He is going to take the stony heart out. The stony heart is that natural human spirit that is full of hatred, born of selfishness.
Not only that, but He says, “I will put my Spirit within you.” He is not only going to make a new self out of me, but He is going to come and make His home in my body. My body will be His temple, His sanctuary.
Colossians 3:10 says, “And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.” Our spirits are called the hidden man of the heart.
In 2 Corinthians 4:16, we are called “the inward man.”
In Romans 7:22, we are called “the inward man.”
This new man has been created in Christ Jesus. He is created in righteousness, holiness, and truth.
This new man is a new creation; he is born of God.
The Word has never had its place in our lives. We approach it with mental assent. We lack that steady assurance in this living message from the Father.
I believe that the basic reason for unbelief is the fact that Satan, our former master, whose nature we once had, is a liar. Because of this satanic nature, unregenerate man is a liar by nature. Go anywhere among people who have never had eternal life and you will find that they are liars.
The hardest problem that faces our government is to deal with nations that have worshipped a lie. They have no truth in them. When they lie, they reflect a part of themselves, for they are liars. When we came out of Satan’s family into God’s family, the most difficult habit to give up was that of lying.
We have lied in a thousand ways when truth would have been a great deal easier.
Because the natural man is a liar by nature, if he breaks fellowship after he becomes a child of God, this old sin sometimes takes the reins and rules him.
Lying is so prevalent that it is difficult for us to put confidence in the Word. We have never been able to depend on the words of individuals. We are not in the habit of relying on what others say; therefore, it is difficult to rely on what God says.
You see, we have been dominated by sense knowledge and the thing we have called faith has been sense knowledge faith.
Faith in the unseen and unknown is a difficult problem, but if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, and our fellowship grows rich and strong, our confidence in the Father becomes as natural and normal as breathing.
We have never been told the difference between the two kinds of truth: sense knowledge truth and revelation truth.
Someone said to me last night, “If I should confess that I was healed, I would be lying, because the pain is still there in my body.
We must remember the difference between the two kinds of truth. Sense evidence is sense knowledge.
The pain is still there, but what does the Word say? “By His stripes, I am healed.” (See Isaiah 53:5.) That is revelation truth, God’s truth.
I have learned that no Word from God is void of fulfillment. He watches over His Word to make it good.
Jesus and His Word are one; the Father and His Word are one.
Then I dare say, “In the name of Jesus, I am perfectly healed. The Father laid my diseases and my pains upon Jesus when He was upon the cross. He became sick with my sickness and He put my diseases and sins away, for He was wounded for my transgressions, bruised for my iniquities, the chastisement of my peace was upon Him, and with His stripes, I am healed.”
In the mind of the Father, disease and sin are one. They are spiritual infirmities. Sin manifests itself in my conduct; disease manifests itself in my body.
Before I can be healed of my sickness, I must be convinced in my spirit that God laid that disease on Jesus. If He laid it on Jesus and I accept that substitute as mine, then my sins are remitted and I stand before God as though sin had never been. The same law holds true in regard to diseases. Disease is spiritual, but it has manifested itself in my physical body.
I have accepted the substitutionary work of Christ on my behalf, so I boldly say, while pain wracks my body, “I am healed,” just as the sinner says, “I am saved” when his breath is tinged with his last debauch.
He has accepted Christ and God has accepted him. Now his conduct will come into harmony with his recreated spirit.
I have been made a new creation. Physically, I have been made a perfectly well and healthy man. That is a spiritual fact, manifested in my physical body.
The Word is a spiritual fact and is manifested in my conduct and my confession.
Understand this thoroughly: that confession precedes possession. You make your confession before the Father acts in your personal case.
You confess that you are perfectly healed while the disease is making full headway in your body. Your confession starts God’s machine in your body.
We have never given confession its place.
You become a slave to your confession. You never grow beyond it. Your faith is held in bondage by your confession.
You grow in grace and power as you confess it.
If you confess weakness, you sink to the level of it.
You should confess that the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus has met every need of your spirit, soul, and body.
Sin consciousness loses its dominion over you the moment your confession glorifies the Father.
There is no room for sin consciousness when we know that we are new creations created in Christ Jesus, know that we are seated together with Him in the heavenly places, and know the reality of our oneness with the Father and Christ.
John 15:7 illustrates it: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”
He caused you to abide in Christ. We cause the Word to abide in us. It is living and doing the Word. We rely upon the integrity of this Word. We know that no Word from God can be broken. We know that Jesus is the Word. We know that the Word is backed up by the throne, the Father, and the Master.
We know that the great mighty Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is dwelling in us, unveiling the Word to our hearts. He is unveiling the reality of the living Word, and the reality of our relationship and His indwelling.
He is showing us the reality of our perfect deliverance from disease and weakness.
There should be no sin consciousness in the heart of the believer, for “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every sin” (1 John 1:7 MOFF).
We stand complete in His completeness.
Of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. (John 1:16)